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Tally Youngblood
Tally Youngblood first appears in the Scott Westerfeld book Uglies as a fifteen-year-old ugly waiting for her sixteenth birthday. After she becomes a "pretty", she will be able to continue to spend time with her best friend, Peris. Tally tries to do the right thing and help the people around her but is often caught up by past mistakes that lead people to resent her and makes Tally resent herself. She tries her best to make up for those mistakes so she can do right by her friends and love-interests but circumstances often intervene, causing more mistakes, leaving her tormented and full of self-loathing. In particulay, she regrets her betraying the Smoke and her best friend Shay. Changes Tally undergoes many changes throughout the series, primarily in appearance and personality, each change according to her status as an ugly, pretty, or special. Ugly Tally has frizzy brown hair, squinty brown eyes, patchy complexion with a wide forehead, a wide nose, and thin lips. She notes to Shay that she likes the left side of her face more than the right. These imperfections are common to all uglies, and are imperfections that exist on any human being. However, due to the different cultural norms, they are exaggerated in the books. Uglies are encouraged to give nicknames to each other based on imperfections in one's appearance. Hence, Tally goes by the nickname Squint. As an ugly, Tally is rebellious but carefree, save for her anxiousness about the inevitable operation. She starts out by desiring being Pretty more than anything in the world but over the course of the books she comes to resent the Operation and the boundaries of the city up until she finds out about the lesions and decide to stay in the Smoke. Pretty As a pretty, Tally takes on the average appearance of other pretties her age: straight teeth, soft jawbone, clear complexion, large hypnotic eyes, slim body, and full lips. Tally's frizzy hair is turned into red curls and her large blue/silver eyes make her vulnerable looking. She has everything she ever wanted, but she also has a deadly enemy in her brain...lesions. As a pretty, Tally is vapid and shallow, side effects of the lesions. However, when she is "bubbly", her mind sharpens and her attitude swings around, resembling that of her ugly attitude in its rebellion and sharp wit. Special As a special, Tally's appearance changes from her new prettiness to cruel beauty, and the surgery gives her strong reflexes, enhanced senses, and a series of flash tattoos all over her face and arms. She has cool, black eyes and her face has wolf-like features. Her mind was again brain-surged and as a special, she thinks of herself as superior to everyone else and is disgusted by anyone who isn't special. Uglies Tally first appears in the series as a young, fifteen-year-old "Ugly" who has just experienced the loss of her best friend because he has just turned sixteen, meaning he had undergone the surgery everyone takes to become a "pretty". Tally decides to sneak over to "New Pretty Town" to see Peris. Peris explains that he tried to ping Tally, but it just felt wrong. Tally notes how gorgeous he is, but seems to be a different person than the friend she knew before. Tally needs to escape the party, so she ends up pulling the fire alarm, grabbing a bungee jacket, and jumping off the fifth-story balcony. She bounces half-way back to Uglyville and runs the rest of the way. She escapes a close call with a warden and then meets Shay, a tall, black-haired, skinny girl who has the same birthday as Tally. After finding this fact out, they instantly become friends. Shay teaches Tally how to hoverboard and eventually shows her how to signal the Smoke. A few days before their sixteenth birthday Shay confides to Tally that she doesn't want to become pretty and she would be living in the wild if she hadn't chickened out along with another boy named Zane. Shay tells Tally that she intends on running away again and she wants to know if Tally would come with her. Tally tells Shay that she wants to become pretty and doesn't want to run away with Shay. Shay leaves by herself that night without another word to Tally. The day of Tally's sixteenth birthday comes along and she can't wait to be pretty. A special tells Tally that there's something wrong with her operation and takes her to Dr. Cable. Cable knows that Shay has run away and wants Tally to track her down. At first Tally refuses, but when Dr. Cable says that she'll never become pretty if she doesn't find Shay, Tally reluctantly agrees. Dr. Cable gives Tally a heart pendant device to activate once she's found Shay. Tally makes her way into the wild, and eventually finds The Smoke. After a while, she starts to like being there. She meets a boy named David who teaches her about the wild, and they develop feelings for one another. This causes problems between Tally and Shay, since Shay and David used to like each other. Tally throws the pendant into a fire, accidentally setting off the tracking device. The Special Circumstances goes into the Smoke and destroys it, but Tally and David escape. Tally sacrifices herself to Special Circumstances, making herself pretty even though she knows the surgery comes with a drawback--lesions that make you dumb. Pretties Tally is enjoying life as a new pretty, hoping to be voted into Shay's "Crims" clique, when the party she is at gets crashed by Croy, a Smokie who brings back faded memories of her time in the wild. With the help of Zane, leader of the Crims, Tally follows Croy's instructions and retrieves two pills - the cure for the pretty brain lesions - and panics about taking them. To avoid detection before the Specials arrive, Tally and Zane agree to split the cure, each taking one of the pills. The pills quickly cure the pair of them, although they are affected differently, with Zane's cure apparently more effective, but having the side effect of crippling headaches. Suspicious of Tally's unusual behaviour, the Specials fit her and Zane with tracking cuffs, which spy on them constantly and thwart their plans to escape together to the New Smoke. However, they still encourage the other Crims to make themselves "bubbly" with adrenaline and caffeine, both of which help to combat the affect of the lesions. This culminates in a prank which results in all the Crims falling onto a soccer field during the pre-game fireworks, making the clique famous. The prank also has some unintended consequences. With the adrenaline rush, Shay remembers Tally's betrayal of the Smoke and breaks off their friendship. The prank also attracts the attention of Dr. Cable, who offers Tally a job as a special, which Tally strongly refuses. Several days later, Tally and Zane decide to journey into Uglytown to try and contact the New Smoke, and meet up with Sussy and Dex, uglies who helped Tally break the Smokies out of Special Circumstances. Sussy and Dex inform Tally and Zane that the New Smoke has recently returned to the Rusty Ruins, and then take them to see Shay, who, with some other Crims, has formed a clique based around self-harm, which she calls the Cutters. Suddenly, Zane collapses from one of his headaches, and Tally insists on taking him to the hospital, although they mask their real reason for going there. Zane realises that he desperately needs Maddy's help to cure himself, and threatens to use an industrial tool to remove the cuff, in spite of the risk that it would destroy his entire arm. Just before he can go through with the plan, Tally realizes that they could use heat to expand the cuffs and remove them. The Crims steal a hot air balloon and Tally and Zane use heat proof gloves to remove the cuffs safely before jumping from the balloon with hoverboards. Tally, the last to jump, is distracted by Peris who has changed his mind about escaping, and chooses to stay, is too late to jump over the city's metal grid. Instead, she jumps over a river, and lands safely but loses her hoverboard in the process. Walking through the forest, she is shocked to discover a pre-Rusty tribe living there, existing in a state of constant warfare with nearby tribes and viewing pretties as gods. She befriends the tribe's holy man, Andrew Simpson Smith, and realises that the group is an anthropology project used to study violence and test the effectiveness of the pretty lesions on a violent mind. Tally encourages Andrew Simpson Smith to escape from the boundaries set for him, and to ignore the false gods, and with his help she steals a hovercraft of a visiting pretty scientist and flies to the Rusty Ruins. At the Rusty Ruins, Tally is met by David, an awkward reunion as she reacts instinctively to his "ugly" face. As they travel to the New Smoke together, Tally becomes increasingly conflicted between her old feelings for David and her new feelings for Zane. When they arrive, she learns that Zane has suffered severe damage from the nanorobots in the cure, which Tally's pill was intended to stop from happening - Tally's pill in fact had no effect on the lesions whatsoever, and the cure she experienced was self-motivated. Fortunately, the damage is not permanent, and Tally resolves to help Zane recover. However, the Smokies suddenly realize a tracking signal has been activated, which is hidden inside Zane's tooth with no chance of removal because it is connected to bone. The New Smoke must move on, leaving Zane behind, and Tally insists on staying with him, realizing that she truly loves him and needs to help him recover. David feels hurt by this, and tries to make her leave, accusing her of choosing Zane merely for his looks, so Tally insults him to make him leave her behind. The Specials arrive, with Shay and the Cutters having been turned into a new clique of specials, and Shay informs Tally that, rather than return to her pretty life, Tally will become special. Specials In the conclusion to the original Uglies trilogy, Tally has become a Special Circumstances agent against her will. But, now that she sees the clarity and awareness that comes with being a special, she is beginning to enjoy herself. There's a catch to being special. She is trying to destroy the very people that brought her to where she is. A New Smoke has been created, and there are uglies and pretties both in the fight against the government. The specials are there to stop them. Tally is a Cutter along with Shay, Tachs, Fausto, Ho, and the others. There is an attack in the night by the New Smoke pulling out all the stops: sneak suits, infrared, and high-speed bows and arrows. Fausto is captured and that is when Tally Youngblood's world is turned right side up for the first time in her life. She convinces Zane to try to go to the New Smoke, and when she tries to follow him, she ends up in a city called Diego that turns out to be the New Smoke. Tally is amazed that the New Smoke had a whole city on their side. Special Circumstances soon finds out about Diego helping out the rebellious new Smoke, so they start a war against Diego. They bombed Town Hall and quickly destroyed most of the city, despite these actions being extremely "rusty". Tally finds Shay and the other Cutters and realizes that they have been cured by Maddy of the "special" lesions. Tally feels betrayed and whilst roaming the evacuated Diego hospital gets a ping from Shay. Shay has found Zane lying in critical condition in the hospital. Despite the doctors efforts, Zane's brain damage is too much and Zane dies. Tally is distraught and decides to go back to her city to confess to Dr. Cable, hoping that this will end the war. Tally does this and sneakily cures Dr. Cable, who comes to her rescue when Tally is about to be de-specialized. Tally escapes and finds David. At the end of the book, Tally sends a ping to Shay, Peris, and Maddy regarding her future as the new, good, special circumstances with David. Category:New pages Category:Tally Youngblood is a fictional character Uglies series, written by Scott Westerfeld. Tally is the protagonist of the books, first appearing in Uglies as a young, 15-year-old girl, waiting for her 16th birthday so that she can be turned pretty. Throughout the series, Tally undergoes significant changes physically and mentally from Ugly, to Pretty, to Special, different classes of citizen in her city. Category:Article stubs